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PHILADELPHIA — University of Pennsylvania archaeologists say they have found the tomb of a
previously unknown Egyptian pharaoh who ruled more than 3,600 years ago, the first of what they
predict could be more than a dozen tombs from a forgotten dynasty.

The tomb, found last week, was heavily looted, but hieroglyphs on the chamber walls clearly
identified it as belonging to a ruler named Woseribre Senebkay, the Penn team announced Wednesday
in conjunction with the Egyptian government.

The researchers already are excavating several nearby sites that appear to be from the same
dynasty, at the site of the ancient city of Abydos, more than 300 miles south of Cairo, said Josef
Wegner, associate professor of Egyptology.

“It looks like there’s a whole royal necropolis of this lost dynasty,” Wegner said.

Archaeologists had suspected the existence of the unknown pharaohs from an ancient list of
rulers called the Turin King List, portions of which are torn and decayed. By analyzing fragments
of the list, a Danish researcher named Kim Ryholt proposed years ago that 16 unknown kings belonged
to the Abydos dynasty.

The name of Senebkay matches one of the partial names on the list, said Wegner, who identified
the tomb’s occupant.

“They basically were forgotten to history,” Wegner said. “In the later king lists, they don’t
appear. They just kind of vanish.”

The tomb, dated to 1650 B.C., appears to have been raided by tomb robbers in ancient times,
Wegner said. Even the king’s remains were ripped apart.

Preliminary work on the skeleton, conducted by Penn graduate students Paul Verhelst and Matthew
Olson, suggests that Senebkay stood about

5 feet, 10 inches tall and died in his mid- to late 40s.

The tomb contained remains of a funerary mask, a coffin and a cedar chest that would have been
used to house the king’s internal organs, customarily removed before burial.

The chest apparently had been reused from the nearby tomb of an earlier king who already was
known to history. The discovery of that tomb, belonging to a king named Sobekhotep, was announced
by the Penn-Egypt team this week.

The discoveries began last year, when Wegner and colleagues found a 60-ton stone sarcophagus
chamber that appeared to have been moved from its original site. They identified its original owner
as Sobekhotep but are still identifying for whom it was reused.